A foreign agent is anyone who actively carries out the interests of a foreign country while located in another host country, generally outside the protections offered to those working in their official capacity for a diplomatic mission. Foreign agents may be citizens of the host country. The term has broad application but, in contemporary English, has a generally pejorative connotation.
A covert foreign agent, also known as a secret agent of a foreign government, may in some countries be presumed to be engaging in espionage. Some countries have formal procedures to legalize the activities of foreign agents acting overtly. An example is the United States law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), the governing statute of which contains a wide-ranging and detailed definition of "foreign agent."
Laws covering foreign agents vary widely from country to country, and selective enforcement may prevail within countries, based on perceived national interest. For example, FARA is sometimes accused of being used to target countries out of favor with an administration.
Famous quotes containing the words foreign and/or agent:
“Friends, both the imaginary ones you build for yourself out of phrases taken from a living writer, or real ones from college, and relatives, despite all the waste of ceremony and fakery and the fact that out of an hour of conversation you may have only five minutes in which the old entente reappears, are the only real means for foreign ideas to enter your brain.”
—Nicholson Baker (b. 1957)
“The agent never receipts his bill, puts his hat on and bows himself out. He stays around forever, not only for as long as you can write anything that anyone will buy, but as long as anyone will buy any portion of any right to anything that you ever did write. He just takes ten per cent of your life.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)